Here is your fight size update for Thursday, August 12, 2021:
- The Rock and Kurt Angle had many classic matches in WWE. Now that both men have moved on past professional wrestling, Kurt Angle jokingly teased another match with The Rock while having a stare-down with the poster for Disney's Jungle Cruise, which stars Dwayne Johnson.
- Speaking with WrestlingInc, Alex Zayne, who recently performed in WWE as Ari Sterling, discussed what he enjoys about watching AEW programming:
“They feel almost forward-thinking in a lot of ways, compared to some of the antiquated thinking we see a lot in wrestling, which that’s everywhere, not WWE, indie wrestling, everything. They’ve got it a little more together when it comes to certain marketing tricks or social media gimmicks or whatever it might be and in the infrastructure of their business model and working with the boys as opposed to kind of against the boys.
“I think that’s helping them immensely. I think their product is really cool. I look around and see so many cool things happening in wrestling right now. You see so many companies working together and all the boys putting over the forbidden door and stuff, and I’m like, yeah, I love doors. I’ll flip through it. Let’s do it.”
- Check out this week's episode of What's NeXT?
- Watch: Drew McIntyre and Riddle react to thrilling Last-Chance Triple Threat Match: WWE Playback
- Speaking with WrestlingInc, "Pitbull" Gary Wolfe opened up on why the Pitbulls never went to WWE.
“In ’98, WWF brought us back up, and they had us work The Headbangers, which is another tag team from the Monster Factory, and [Jim] Cornette was, I guess, in charge of it and he wouldn’t let us do our finish. We didn’t care. We still had a really good match, and it’s not like Vince didn’t want to hire us. He wanted to hire us two other times, and we said no. He brought us in, and I’m like, you know what, let’s see what happens. And once he dissed us, he never called us back, and we got a call to go to Australia. I moved to Melbourne, Australia, and I was working for King Curtis’ buddy and Kevin Sullivan’s buddy, Mark Lewin who ran Hardcore Championship Wrestling out of Australia.”
- Speaking with Sportskeeda, former WCW Tag Team Champion waiting on the recent controversy surrounding Max Caster:
"First of all, I played a heel for a long, long time. Even after WCW, for years, I was going back and forth overseas, I played a heel for a long, long time. I never had to resort to cheap heat. I'm a bad dude. I don't need cheap heat like a Colby Covington (UFC star). This guy, Max Caster, or whatever his name is, if you resort to that, you ain't got a career in front of you, anyway. And for a company to resort to that, especially a company that is owned by a person of color, supposedly. So maybe some people that are in this country are people of color, that would be deemed as people of color, but in your own mind, you are not," said Stevie Ray.
"How did you even let it get by? We are talking about big-time TV here. How did you let that get by? You just told me before I came to this show, what I could say and what I couldn't say. How hard is that? Why would we make something that's so juvenile become so I'm important all of a sudden. This ain't some house show, this is big-time TV. And you already know what's going on in this world. For your mind to even want to go there, you already know what's up. I'm never going to say someone stupid, just because they did something stupid, but was that stupidity calculated?" Ray concluded.
- You can watch the full 40 + minute match between John Cena and Shawn Michaels from the April 23, 2007 episode of Monday Night Raw below:
- The Great Muta will miss Pro Wrestling NOAH’s show on August 15 in Kawasaki due to being in close contact with a person who tested positive for COVID-19.
- You can watch the full GLEAT show from August 4 below:
- Speaking with Chris Van Vliet, Tyler Breeze reflected on advice given to him by Dolph Ziggler.
"There was one time where I thought we should have won something. I think it was a battle royal on SmackDown. The winners would get a tag team title shot, and it was when Fandango [and I] were really hitting with the fashion files. I think they put over The Hype Bros. I remember feeling that tonight should have been our night. That's really the only time that I have thought that. In the end, I think that people followed me and got behind me because I never really won that... In reality, if you look at my career, I never really got that push. I was always there. Dolph Ziggler gave me the perfect thing when I started working with him. He says 'Look, man. It's very clear who the guy is. If it's not you, chances are it will never be you. They won't hand you the ball, but you will work with those guys. Even when you steal the ball from those guys, they still won't give it to you. But you will always be used because they know they can rely on you' That's why you get this underground following which Dolph did, which I did. The people know that they want something to happen and it just won't happen. It builds this cult following for you that translates into everything you do. I love being in that category. I think it's really cool that people get behind you because the machine never did."
- Watch: Eva Maria throws out the first pitch at a San Francisco Giants game.
- Today, WWE stock was trading at $50.47 per share when the market closed.
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- Here are some highlights from today's episode of NXT UK: